Metaserver
# Metaserver

A MetaServer is a central broker providing a collated view (similar to a database view) for dispersed web resources. It is used to collect data from various web services, web pages, databases, or other online resources/repositories and then present the combined results to the client using a standard web protocol (e.g. HTTP with HTML, REST, SOAP, XML-RPC, etc.).

## Styles of use

The purpose of such a system is to provide one or several of the following:

* a unified view on multiple resources
* easy comparison of the data
* standardized access to different repositories
* calibration of the data
* determining the data consensus

## Example MetaServer projects

Typical, widespread implementations of MetaServers are:

* Meta-Search-Engines
* DNS MetaServers
* Protein Structure and Function Prediction Gateways
* Computer Game MetaServers
* Text Mining MetaServers (e.g. BioCreative Metaserver - BCMS)
